I had an amazing experience when I tried to start my 2006 Escape Hybrid over the weekend. Flashing lights, beeping alarms, furiously clicking relays, etc. Continued even after I removed the key. Nothing like that in my experience. The service guy I called said that that is the car's normal signal that the LV battery needs recharging, but nothing in my literature says so. Is that true?

Hal

 

If you don't want to go to a Ford dealer, a lot of places can test your 12v battery (assuming that's what you mean by LV). Since yours is probably a few years old already and it's wintertime, it could be on its last legs. If it's dead you won't be stranded, just make sure you read up how to do an emergency start from the HV battery.

 

Thanks, but I really wanted to know if it is true that the car signals low battery (LV, meaning low voltage, meaning 12v) by putting on the fireworks display. That's the real question.

I know how to test a battery, and this one (six cells) had four good cells on the inside, and two bad cells, one at each end, enough to supply a solid 12v. It's supposed to be a maintenance-free battery, so shouldn't run out of water in a mere four years. If I knew for sure that the problem was a low battery, it's no big deal to install a new one---I've done it dozens of times.

Hal

 

I had the same experience with a bad battery and I got all of the beeps clicks and lights that you saw. Dealer replaced battery under warranty and problem solved!

Hope this helps.

 

It is not at all unusual for an intrusion alarm to trigger when 12 volts is restored after a period of low voltage or no voltage. Your battery was low before you inserted the key, once you inserted the key the 12 volt battery began to be recharged via the hybrid battery, quickly rose to ~12 volts, and that triggered the alarm.

"...enough to supply a solid 12v..."

No, NOT, not by any means.

Each cell can supply 2.25 volts, TOPS, under load. Don't let the terminal voltage during charging fool you.

"...shouldn't run out of water in a mere 4 years.."

That is entirely a function of how often you bring the battery down to a seriously low charge and even moreso how rapidly it gets recharged. Top off the "water", put an almost dead battery on a rapid recharger and the electrolyte will begin to boil over within minutes.

 

Thanks, wwest, that's useful (I live in the twest, meaning tame west). It never occurred to me that it is not a stupid signal of a low battery, but the intrusion alarm, triggered by the voltage fluctuation. That makes more sense. and of course I now have a new battery in place, so the incident is history (I hope).

And yes, the 4+-celled battery was delivering a solid 12 volts, I checked it, so the outer cells were low, but not in rigor mortis. I really do know the difference between the battery voltage and the charging voltage.

And no, this battery was never mistreated or brought down to a low charge, though it was indeed low after the event.

This is all beginning to hang together, and here is my interpretation. Back in October I got rear-ended by the traditional teen-ager driving a friend's car (stop-and-go traffic, in which I was stopped and he was go-go). He claimed he was "only" going 40 mph. In the collision the battery certainly got a lot of horizontal acceleration, but seemed OK. My guess is that it sustained some hairline cracks in its case, which oozed enough of its electrolyte in the three months to lower its voltage, but so slowly that it wasn't noticeable. Then the sequence was as you described.

The reason the fancy flashing display isn't mentioned in the literature as a sign of a low battery is that it really isn't. The designers intended it as an intrusion alarm, which should indeed be spectacular, but didn't foresee all the other non-intrusion events that could trigger it. This was one of those, and there are probably others. (It always troubled me to think that they would design a low-battery alarm that turned on lights, further depleting the battery. They didn't; their error was not considering this particular source of a false alarm.)

So your posting was right on target, and I thank you again.

Hal

 

I don't have any idea why but over the years I have noticed that with failed/failing lead-acid batteries they do seem to have a high propensity for the "end" cells to be drier than "inside" cells.

Oops....terminal voltage...

yes, I would expect that with NO LOAD a battery with dead, DEAD, cells might still measure 12 VDC, but add even a slight load and.....

I'm also curious just how you measured each cell individually...I have often probed, voltmeter probes, the connection structure inside the battery through the refill openings but often with results that I could not make good sense of. Yesteryear it was easier with the cell interconnects exposed.

 

Oh, I did not measure the voltages individually---that's very hard with modern batteries---but measured the total voltage and did the voltage measurement with an old voltmeter that draws about 5 ma (1000 ohms/volt on the 20v scale), so it wasn't much but it wasn't zero drain EMF.

On top of that I measured the specific gravity of the electrolyte in each cell---the two outer ones being way down, and the four inner ones being quite healthy. If there is no leakage that's a direct measurement of the charge state of the cell. But I'm guessing that there was leakage here, so it's hard to say anything quantitative. Still, if the healthy inner ones were delivering 2.2v, and the total was 12v, each of the outer ones could have been delivering 1.6v, which is consistent with their specific gravity. So it all hangs together.

I suppose I could have claimed a pro-rated warranty on the old battery, which was only four years old, but forgot.

Hal